Like in a virtual environment using qemu on easy debian? Or am I asking too much of a handheld device here?

No, it's possible. The only border is your skills.

Take a look here:
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba/Fedora
https://elektranox.org/website/debian_on_n900.html

Fedora has ARM repositories. Seems logical you could build an ARM rootfs tarball much like the Easy Debian tarball and chroot into it. Wouldn't require any emulation at that point.

"Easy Fedora", so to speak.. I actually thought someone had that around here already.

ETA: beat by giannoug... complete with links and all!

Hehe

It seems Jebba has phone support in Fedora. Interesting.
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba/Fedora#Misc
Scroll to "To initialize modem..."

There are several linux flavors that will run on the device, as long as you don't want to use it as a phone. Getting the wifi and bluetooth running may be difficult, but possible. But the cell-side stuff is still quite closed up.

If you are looking for something like that, you may want to look into the FreeRunner from FIC/OpenMoko. There are several debian based distros, also ARM based, but the hardware specs are more open (though less stable at times). I also happen to have a FR for sale (cheep!) if you're in the US/Canada.

wow I read the docs, at this point the process seems way beyond my comprehension. I guess for now I will drop back into easy debian and continue to learn basic stuff like grep sed and awk.

I have a feeling I would brick my phone if I tried the install.

ok wading through the info again, not understanding much. 2 questions

1) I just want chroot fedora. Do Ineed to install fedora via the full instructions as posted above for that (ie setup a dual boot)?

2) can I do this without an sdcard?

I take setting up chroot fedora will be much more complicated then easy debian. But I know I need to try.

1) No you don't need to.

2) Yes. Make an image.

What you might want to do is make a simple ext2 image with the rootfs of CentOS inside. Then you can mount it and chroot into it.

and this should work with centos or just fedora?

I like Fedora. I've run every version of Fedora from the original release... But what is it that you're hoping to get from a chrooted Fedora that you can't get for native Maemo?